AMD's partners were instructed to release reference cards for the first
few weeks, with AMD actually controlling sampling of the product. Doing
so created a level playing field that was marred, as far as we were
concerned, by homogenous products
selling at near-identical prices.

With the reference embargo now lifted, partners are free to market
their own in-house-designed models, so we expect to see a bunch of
cards with different coolers - getting rid of that annoying
fan on the reference card - and, most likely, with pre-overclocked core
and memory speeds to boot.

Sapphire, the biggest AMD AIB of them all, has been one of the first to
release a non-reference Radeon HD 4850 card. Let's welcome the TOXIC
model that
promises better aural characteristics combined with higher performance,
bringing a potent salvo to the well-received GPU.